Natalee Holloway’s Father Reacts to News Her Body May Have Been Found (EXCLUSIVE)

When Dave Holloway’s daughter Natalee went missing in 2005, he never imagined that he would still be living this nightmare more than a decade later. He tells In Touch, “I thought we would find her quickly. I never dreamed that we’d be this long without an answer.” But all that could change in the very near future; as In Touch previously reported, an eyewitness informant named Gabriel has come forward with details about how Natalee died, claiming that she choked on her vomit while with Joran van der Sloot — prompting him to panic, and bury her body with the help of his father.

In an upcoming Oxygen special, The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, Gabriel explains that the family was “close” to finding the body, so the van der Sloots instructed a man named John Ludwich to recover it. Gabriel tells Dave, “[Joran told John], ‘I’ll pay you $1,500 if you go and dig up the body.’ [They] uncovered the body in a national forest, dug it up, and took it to the morgue. The body got cremated, and then they threw it in the ocrean, low tide. That’s what John told me.”

Obviously, hearing these details could be upsetting to Dave, but he tells In Touch he tries to stay levelheaded. “I’ve conditioned myself to try not to get emotional and to put up a wall,” he says. “But a lot of those things [we were told were] getting graphic, and you know, it hits the heart. You’re talking about my daughter.”

But, Dave says, all will be worth it if it means finally getting answers about what happened to his daughter, who he called “the most motivated, goal-oriented, determined kids you would ever see.” He tells In Touch, exclusively, “Twelve years and we still have nothing, until now. This is the most credible lead I’ve ever seen… Justice will be served.”

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